Jill reached her mind towards Bertha and willed the crystal settlement core to show itself. The night before it had erupted from the bathroom floor right before she was going to use the toilet. But now, nothing happened. Her mental commands were being refused.

  “Jill,” Babu said, “that’s your bathroom. Did you, uh, make a custom seat or something?”

  “I’m trying to get the stupid settlement core to show,” Jill said, “it was going to be dramatic!” She scowled and stopped mentally pushing. “Hey, System,” she shouted aloud, “why isn’t the core popping up?”

  “Inner Sanctum?” Sangita asked. She had gotten the message from the System as well. “Your Inner Sanctum is the…” she gestured.

  Babu burst out laughing.

  “It’s not my fault, it’s the System,” Jill said, “it was messing with me. Like I said before, it’s a sassy bitch sometimes.”

  “To me, it just acts like a computer program,” Sangita said. “And a useful one at that.”

  “It says it’s adaptive to its user,” Babu said and wiped a tear from his eye. “Now we have proof of that!”

  It was Sangita’s turn to laugh, though she cut it off after just a few chuckles.

  “You two suck,” Jill said, spiking each one in turn with a glare. “System!” She barked to the sky. “Make Babu and Sangita authorized to see the core, will you?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Jill said and stomped into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind her. A glowing gold crystal burst from the floor, but Jill had been expecting it and she leaped aside, onto the toilet rim.

  “The System really does seem to make things harder for her,” Sangita said, her voice muffled by the metal door.

  “It seems to tease her” Babu replied, “but I don’t think it has ever done something bad in a crisis.”

  “She must have swore at it too much. This is why I taught you manners.”

  “You taught me manners,” Babu said, voice laden with skepticism, “in case a magic-power granting program-thing came to earth and could be offended?”

  Jill tuned them out and focused on the crystal.

  ‘I did not name it that, smartass,’ Jill thought, ‘change the name to…’ she paused, ‘shit I don’t know, how about Berthaville?’

  Jill sighed and projected disappointment toward the System. ‘I’ve got something for your adaptive interface to ponder, shit-for-brains,’ she thought. ‘Jokes are much funnier the first time.’

  Usually, responses from the System came instantaneously, but this time there was a pause of several seconds.

  ‘Nice,’ Jill thought. ‘Now, show me the security options.’

  Jill tapped her fingers on her thigh for a few seconds and thought about who she trusted.

  ‘Set Babu, Ras, and Mia as Sub-Administrators,’ she projected to the System, ‘Let them change whatever they want. And don’t require the door being closed, that’s just dumb unless I make the bathroom some sort of armored high-security super-crapper. For Sangita,’ she paused for a moment, then nodded to herself, ‘let her see the settlement boxes, but don’t let her change things. Hide the core from everyone else.’

  Jill balanced and extended one foot over the core crystal. She hooked it onto the door handle, flicked it down, and pushed the door open.

  Babu and Sangita turned their heads and took in Jill, standing on one leg on the seat of her toilet, balanced over a spiky gold crystal. They shared a look. “This is normal,” Babu said. Sangita sighed. Then both of their eyes started flickering back and forth as they read the settlement notifications.

  “You named it Berthaville?” Sangita asked.

  “Yes,” Jill said. She jumped over the core and out of the bathroom, ducking her head in midair to avoid the lintel.“That right there is what I named it. No other name. You have a problem with that?”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Babu waved at his mother and shook his head back and forth.

  “That’s what I thought,” Jill said. “Bertha’s a kickass name, so Berthaville is too.”

  “You know it!” Babu said, far too cheerfully.

  Jill narrowed her eyes. “Back to business,” she said. “First up is picking a focus.” She willed the Settlement screen to show those options.

  “Why this option first?” Sangita asked. “Not spending the point on a power?”

  “Well-” Jill started to explain.

  “Ope!” Babu interrupted. “This doesn’t cost points, but it’s permanent! It’s just like the choice you have to make when you fully upgrade one of your modules. What it reveals could totally change how the settlement progresses and what power is best to buy first.”

  “Bingpot,” Jill said. The coffee machine beeped and she reached over to grab the freshly brewed cup. “So, there’s the obvious choice of biological focus to help fix our food problem, but I don’t think long term that’s the right call.”

  “Bertha is your main asset,” Sangita said. “Will the techno one help things that are made through your Soulbound powers?”

  “Oh,” Babu said. “That would make the choice easy. Does Bertha count as being inside of Berthaville?”

  “How can the truck be inside of the things inside of it?” Jill asked, mentally poking the System at the same time.

  “That’s a ‘no’ then,” Jill said. “What do you two vote for?”

  There was a beat of silence as everyone thought. Sangita broke it first. “We need food. Badly. But nearly everything else that people here do falls under Technomana.”

  Babu nodded. “People are already crafting things out of monster parts,” he said. “Remember that machine shop at the armory back in Boseman? Everything they were doing there would count. Maybe we can ask for some of the airport’s trucks or forklifts as payment and people could upgrade them into battle buddies for Bertha!”

  “Or as a more practical priority,” Sangita said, “have them make farming equipment, so the focus’ bonus will apply to them in a roundabout way.”

  “I’m more excited about them crafting guns,” Jill said, “or armor.” She glanced at her tiny closet, where a badass, spiked-shoulder set of leather armor hung. It needed a good cleaning and repair, as there was a blood-covered hole in the shoulder, but Jill could hopefully get it upgraded at the same time. If the armor had been 10% better, it might have stopped the round entirely.

  Another flash of memory struck Jill: Bertha side-on to a horde of monsters, guns blazing away, while those inside ran out to rescue others. They were exposed in a way that Jill wasn’t and would rely on their arms and armor far more. The edge Technomana gave them would save lives.

  “Right,” Jill said. “Technomana it is.” She selected and finalized it; a new set of options for the Settlement appeared before her.

  “Ok,” Jill said, “nothing we can use now for food. But I bet that Workshop is what the armory had.”

  “I’ll call them right after we’re done and ask Buckman,” Babu said. “If it is he can tell me exactly what it does before we spend a point on it.”

  “Nice thinking,” Jill said. “Now,” she cracked her neck, “time to read the rest.” She summoned boxes for the other available powers and silence descended in the cabin as they read.

  “So,” Jill said when she had finished. “I’m thinking we put the first point into size increase so that we can set up some farms or hydroponics or something.”

  “There’s no option in the buildings for those,” Sangita said. “We’ll have to get people to build them manually.”

  “You said people had farmer classes,” Jill said. “I’ll give them space, they do their stuff, we don’t starve.”

  Babu raised his hand. “I think it might take a few more settlement levels before that will work,” he said.

  Jill scowled. “Yeah? Why is that?”

  “Well there being a power called Air Supply is a bit of a red flag, don’tcha know,” he said. “It kind of implies that an extra source of air is needed.”

  Jill snapped her fingers. “Right! It’s a dimensional bubble, whatever that means -” she was interrupted by another notification.

  “Thanks, Sys,” Jill said. “So whatever we need, we have to bring in from outside, unless it’s made from a power?”

  “Interstitial Realm…” Babu muttered, staring at the wall. His eyes began flickering back and forth, the sure sign of someone reading more System-provided information.

  “When I made Bertha bigger,” Jill continued, “it sucked in a ton of air even though I’ve got some climate control stuff generating air.”

  “I remember that,” Sangita said. “It was like a hurricane blasting through the trailer.”

  “I bet a whole kilometer diameter of extra space would be a fuckton worse.”

  Sangita grimaced. “There would be more deaths,” she said, tone flat.

  “Hey System,” Jill said, “Put warnings on options that are going to straight-up murder people if I take them, will you?”

  “Good,” Jill said. “Well, it has to be air first.“ She selected it and braced herself. Every time she had taken one of Bertha’s soulbound powers she had felt the changes in her truck as if they were happening to her own body, and some of them had been truly disturbing. But this time there was nothing. Jill shut her eyes and focused hard, shutting out as much of the room around her as she could to feel what was happening in the rest of Bertha. Finally, she felt it: her truck wasn’t spending Mana on creating and filtering the air anymore.

  “So no food production right away,” Sangita said.

  Her voice snapped Jill out of her introspection. “Uh,” she said, “right.”

  “So is stealing back to being plan A?” Sangita asked and narrowed her eyes.

  Jill sighed. “It’s kind of a kick in the cooter, but yes. I’ll also put food on the top of the list of things to ask for in payment from the Commander.” She stood. “Hey, Babu,” she said.

  He didn’t answer, still engrossed in reading System boxes.

  “Babu,” Sangita said, tone sharp.

  “What?” he said, jerking backward and looking around.

  “We’re done for now, but I’ve got a job for you after you talk to Buckman,” Jill said. “For you too,” she said to Sangita. “Figure out how to level the Settlement as fast as possible.”

  “Ok,” Babu said. “Sounds fun. What are you going to do?”

  “Something that’s always a giant pain in my ass,” Jill said. “Convince someone to pay for a shipment I’ve already delivered.”